HEALTHY SCHOOLS EQUAL HEALTHY COMMUNITIES

By Bob Oliver

Community health is judged by its schools and by home ownership rates being significantly higher than rental.

During the past four years, MPUSD Trustees slashed over $8M off a budget deficit that has no beginning, no end, and shows no accountability. Teachers found their futures missing. Students found their teachers missing. MPUSD is still missing the solution to its problem. Trustees need to remember: We are a community of people. As a community we need to endorse a solution.

In order for there to be accountability, everyone in the district needs to have basic information available to them. No one including myself should be making decisions on bad data, no data, and budgetary surprises. However, this is exactly what trustees are attempting to do.

• We need an immediate "STATE AUDIT" for credibility.
• The Community needs to be educated.
• We need 'local' funding sources - immediately.

In contrast, a tax for one hundred fifty million dollars would be paid in less than 15 years at the same or less rate of repayment and save over three hundred million dollars while change takes shape. Conceivably, the district might turn adversity into a new role model for Public Education, that would aid each of us in taking back our own right of individual responsibility.

MPUSD Trustees made huge cuts into the very fabric of what holds together our schools. Teachers and programs were cut across the board. Schools were closed and repercussions and new costs were ignored, or not yet perceived.

I have witnessed trustees claiming that they did not have adequate information to make these decisions - yet they did anyway. These cuts were coming with or without the Measure A Bond - which was solely for property renovations. Based on district facts, these cuts are unwarranted. Based on Public outcry these cuts are unacceptable.

Within the Monterey City boundries, 62% of the residential property is rental unit. One could begin to speculate that as much as 70% of the property in Monterey is owned by less than 10% of the people. In a healthy neighbourhood, 70% is home ownership while 30% is rental property.

Further speculate. No bond messure or tax measure has been proposed for the MPUSD in over 40 years. We may be the only district in the state that has not proposed one.

Who has the power to keep School Issues off the ballot and why? The most simplistic answer is, our local power brokers. The reason, because they own so much property it is in their own short sighted interest to not tie up "any" disposable incomes that might not come their way. A very small group runs the Monterey Peninsula. Help me open it up to the community so we can become healthy again.

The alternative

5 year tax raises 11M per year. "Pay as we go". 2nd tax bill once we know our needs.

This proposal is made after evaluating the incredible potential we have in the people who spend the most time with our children.

Some of what I have witnessed include a library at Los Arboles with $100,000 improvements at little to no cost to the district. Children use the library in numbers you won't believe - unless you go see for yourself. MHS Restoration Committee has painted most of the exterior and some interior buildings at Monterey High School. The School Board estimate for this project was $400,000. MHS Restoration Committee, through its volunteerism program did it for $15,000 - zero $ cost to the district.

"AUDIT . EDUCATE . FUND"

On March 11th, at about 10pm - when good children should be asleep, a group of kids were armed in the streets. At the same time, an army of kids descended into the MPUSD Board Meeting armed with picket signs and knowledge.

"BOTH GROUPS WERE ARMED AND DANGEROUS!"

boboliver9@aol.com www.bob-oliver-for-mayor.com/